You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. ~ David Viscott

The past two weeks have been wearying, and aside from a Saturday when a combined headache, kink in my neck, and day without sleep found me waving the white flag from my bed, I have plodded on and even have some good things to show for it.  The bathroom has been put back together post-painting, with new shower curtain and curtains too.  The bedroom wall-painting is almost done.  The headboard project is at least begun, with stars, string lights, and waiting-for-payday pillow shams next on its to-do list.  The bedroom curtains are up but lacking their ruffle-trim, tie-backs, and the hankie-patchwork-type sheers I'm planning to hang underneath them.  The 1980s childhood memoir-writing continues. The healthy eating continues.  It feels, though, like I've just been hanging on and getting through this fall so far.  Do you remember the brilliant exchange between the frustrated sheriff and his secretary in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men?  It keeps coming to mind this month.  "What is it that (Justice) Torbert says?"  he asks her.  "About truth and justice."  She distractedly answers, "We dedicate ourselves anew daily.    Somethin like that."  The sheriff responds, "I think I'm goin to commence to dedicatin myself twice daily.  It may come to three fore it's over."  Hear, hear.  I brought in Halloween cookies for my coworkers this week, and the cashier yesterday morning told me "I love your smile" while bagging my groceries, and I'm choosing to accept both gestures as signs that hope is not lost.  :)  Here's to the plodding-on.  

Beginning to Look Like a Chair

The wing chair is certainly looking more chair-like, but after three weeks of choosing needle and thread over long walks, I'm likely looking overstuffed too.  :)  Now that I've finished the patchwork part of the chair, I'll head back outside.  Around 5 a.m. this morning, after a long night working on this and determined to make it my last night of making patches, I finished the patchwork on the chair.  ♥

On a roll, I decided to keep going and cover the chair's [wings? I assume] and the strip under its cushion in the pink rosebud fabric I'd set aside.  And Stuffed, who had been barricaded from "his" chair most of the month, promptly jumped up and settled in for a nap as soon as I'd removed the last straight pin.  

I'm taking a break for a couple days while I plan out the rest of the fabric and rest my hot-glue-blistered fingertips.  The moment I added the rosebud fabric at either side, the chair looked like a true chair again and not so much like a wing chair I was in the process of maybe destroying by adding handmade patches to its back-rest.  'A bit of a relief, that moment.  I've never done this before, this revamping of a whole chair.  Cotton batting!  Needles!  Threads!  Upholstery trim!  Hot glue!  Limited lengths of vintage fabric pieces that really had to be measured-twice-cut-once. 

I'm beyond pleased.  Maybe I can someday sell chairs and couches redone this way, I was telling Mike the other day.  I could get a vendor spot at the flea market with my furniture pieces and maybe some pillows. . . .  I had already drafted a few versions of future business cards in my head when Mike snorted, "Yeah.  Just see if you can finish one chair first."  My mom and I have had an in-joke since first seeing Dirty Dancing ages ago that we break out in moments like this.  When lead dancer Johnny excitedly tells Neil Kellerman his ideas on how to "shake things up a bit" with the final show's choreography, Neil obnoxiously cuts him off as he begins to dance and says, "Woah, boy!  'Way over your head here."  Mom and I have adapted that to "Woah, girl!" and we say it to each other whenever one of us tells the other of her latest plans.  My business cards were definitely a "Woah, girl!" moment, but if I saw this chair at a flea market, I'd want it, so maybe someday. . . .It is always sweet to experience these moments that make you fantasize a bit and see a maybe-different-maybe-someday vision of yourself and of your life. 

Almost every--if not every--patch here has some personal significance, which makes it all the sweeter.

My grandparents' old chenille piece and one of their quilt-top pillow tops, hankies from friends and family, a scrap of fabric from chairs I'd sat on in my first apartment kitchen with Old Friend, curtains from my former room at my parents' house, a bandana Mom found me for my birthday a few years ago. . . .The three roses in the tiny square patch at upper-right below were attached to a cross pendant my friend Sommer gave me for Christmas our last Christmas together.  I saved the cross, of course, but decided to add "her" roses to the chair, so now my Som is there too.  ♥

The heart I made for the patch below reminded me more and more of my beloved Holly Hobbie as I worked on it, adding the rose, the stitches, and the orange trim above it, which reminded me of my dad, who still laughs at the fact that as a kid, I pronounced Holly Hobbie, "Hobbly Hobbly."  He still calls her that.  :)  I've found Holly Hobbie fabric to use elsewhere on the chair, and I'm sure a "Hobbly Hobbly" joke will be made by Dad when he sees it. 

Since most of my Old English Sheepdog things are still packed away at my parents' house, I didn't have any of my stash here to cut up for a patch, so I decided to try to make one.  The sheepdog below is okaaaaaay.  I did my best and gave it some grass and flowers to stand on, and I just said, "That's good enough" and moved on.  This has been a sweet project, but I'm also tired of it.  Have I mentioned I don't really even like to sew?!  The things we do for our visions.  :)  The white-striped dotted Swiss patch to the dog's right is one of the curtain-pieces.  The pink-dotted piece is the chair-scrap, and eagle-eyed blog readers will also recognize it as the fabric I used to frame my "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint. 

The coral-ey daisy patch and the one of the girl playing with her cat below are two of the only patches from the salvaged quilt-top I saved that I ended up using, after all.  Most of the girl-with-her-cat patch is covered by the seat cushion, but it was too dear not to use.  It is pretty threadbare and maybe wouldn't have survived being cut out and re-attached someplace else, so it's fine where it is.  The pink chenille at left was my grandparents'.  Gah!  I love this chair!  ♥

I also represented Stuffed with the heart-patch below made of the green dotted Swiss fabric I used way back in June 2007, before I'd even first met him, to make him his cat-shaped toy we've come to call "Girl Cat."  I paid a visit to Mike that summer bearing a backpack filled with homemade apple pie, peanut butter and chocolate birthday cake, and the cat toy for Stuffed.  A tiny green dotted heart now to remind me of it all.  ♥

The boy-on-the-beach/no-fishing patch above is one of the only other original quilt squares I saved from the old quilt-top I used as a grid for this.  Like the girl-with-cat square, it is threadbare and fragile, but we'll love it as along as it lasts.  It is too special not to save. 

Stuffed is content just to have access to his chair again.  And now I'll join him in it for a bit of rest.  ♥

Patchwork Chair Progress

Since painting the mantel white Sunday, my vision for my patchwork wing chair that will ultimately sit beside it has changed a bit, and I've removed the bolder-colored patches and replaced them with softer-colored ones.  The past few days have been contented quiet ones--my favorite kind--that have found me cutting up some of my vintage handkerchiefs and leftover fabric pieces into patches and sewing them onto a thicker white backing fabric, pinning the new patches onto the original quilt's "grid" with straight pins, and arranging and rearranging them while Stuffed dozily watches from his new favorite nap-spot behind the box fan on the floor.  I have skipped my morning walks the past few days and been a hand-stitching homebody instead, stopping for sun tea breaks and meal breaks and email/online reading breaks, happily in the zone where you  finally see the way you wanted your project to look all along and you delight in every moment's work that brings you closer to getting it done. 

I'm still a long way from being done--I haven't covered the arms yet or done anything, really, besides the back-rest part here, but I can already tell that this chair is going to be one of My Favorite!  Things!  Ever!  ♥  so I am enjoying every snip and stitch. 

Our apartment feels a little homier each week lately, for some reason I haven't put my finger on yet.  Something just seems to have shifted recently, or a corner has been turned in all the decorating and arranging and organizing, but home really feels like Home lately, much cozier and more "Us" than it was even a couple months ago.  The bedroom is still completely undone with nothing on the walls, the landlord's window blinds are still up instead of the curtains I have in mind, and some boxes and bags from our August 2011 move-in are still stacked in a corner, but the rest of our tiny home is really coming together, and it's been sweet to watch that unfold.  Maybe the patchwork chair is absorbing some of the joy around it.  I've felt happier and both lighter and more grounded when I've looked at it this week.

Some of the chair's patches are from a battered old quilt-top of my grandparents'.  Others are sections of fabric I had saved after other projects.  The white dotted Swiss striped squares used to be my bedroom curtains at my parents' house.  A few of the handkerchiefs were from friends.  The original quilt-top I'm using as a grid by attaching my own patches onto was a $5 find at a flea market a few years ago.  Like most anyone who works with vintage items, and perhaps especially people who admire patchwork quilts, I wonder at the story behind each piece:  Was this once a child's favorite dress?  Did someone go for a walk with the love of her life while wearing that fabric?  In whose pocket or handbag was this lovely scalloped handkerchief, and to where-all did it travel?  Was that piece salvaged from a grandmother's tablecloth or a father's favorite shirt?  Was this gingham flower-and-giraffe print chosen for a little one on the way or for one who was already toddling around with blankie in-hand?  I'd love to listen to every single story.  I like to think that somehow, all the patches' original owners can see me as I admire and affix all these little pieces of their lives to this chair in my home now.  It's nice to believe that. 

I've already added my initials to a rose-covered quilt square here, and I think when I'm finally ready to declare the chair done, I'll embroider the date and a short note onto one last patch that will someday let its next owners know, if it won't be obvious to them already, that this was made with love.